Olympic Village part of Sochi gambling zone, Crimea construction to begin 2017

Krasnaya Polyana (Красная Поляна) will be the name of the newly minted Russian gambling zone to replace doomed Azov City, according to media reports coming out of the former Soviet state. The “Gorky Gorod” ski resort and portions of “Rosa Khutor” alpine resort will be included in the gambling zone.

Last week the government reportedly released a map of the area where state-owned Sberbank had invested about a trillion and a half rubles (US$42 billion) in an attempt to show the world that Russia was ready for the “big stage”. The Sochi Olympics project cost the government about five times what they had budgeted to spend, according to reports at the time.

Royal Time Group, who recently lost a token bid for re-compensation over being tossed out of the first gambling zone to be created, Avov City in the Krasnodar region, will take over a 165,000 sq ft property there (plot 23: 49: 0000000: 7415) for the pursuit of gaming business according to Russian language media outlet, newsofgambling. The State Duma had already decreed that no publicly funded developments could be converted to gambling uses, but any private land or holdings in the area of the Olympic Village area were open to development.

Royal Time Group had reportedly been cold to the notion of investing in the Sochi zone after being ordered to shutter their casino investments in Azov City earlier. In May, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed an order allowing operators there to remain in business until December 31, 2018. The company is already deeply involved in another region near Vladivostok, building Phoenix Resort Casino in the Primorye Integrated Entertainment Zone, near Lawrence Ho’s Tigre de Cristal.

In other Russian gambling news, state-owned media has announced that construction will begin next year in the illegally annexed Crimea gambling zone which the government approved for gambling in June.

The government has also reportedly begun taking land to build infrastructure such as roads and utility corridors in the “Amber” gambling zone in the Kaliningrad region. One of a planned 15 casinos opened there in April.